I like the things in my life to have a bit of humour in them. Most of the books I read are ‘humorous’ and I like to watch funny films mostly. It’s one of my little bits of escapism that help me to cope with the bad things in life. As tomorrow is likely to be the worst day in my life for some considerable time, today was a day when I really badly needed some humour just to help keep the worries about tomorrow at bay for a bit longer. Now we’re home, my heart is heavy and I’m full of fear and trepidation about my fate. For some reason, I am one of life’s worriers, despite my general air of ebullience and my ‘half full’ outlook, when something gets under my skin it just stays there and festers and I can’t get it out of my system. Of course these things often turn out to be less bad than you anticipate and I’ll probably post tomorrow night in a much better humour.

We’ve been out and about, firstly to Reading to pick up a friend, then into London to an exhibition and then a detour on the way back to Reading to see a field of white poppies that were just so spectacular but relative to the red ones, understated!

On the way to see this field, we drove past this pub with the wonderful sign ‘Customers Required, No Experience Necessary’. I nearly yelled, ‘STOP’ let me get out and photograph that sign but I thought DM would get grumpy so I kept schtum and let him carry on driving. Fortuitously the poppy field was just around the corner so while they were photographing poppies, I walked back along the lane to get this shot.

This I can relate to in a number of different ways, firstly because I love the humour in the sign, secondly because I love old, country pubs but most of all because it’s a Fuller’s pub. Coincidentally we had driven past the Fuller’s brewery earlier in the afternoon, it’s on the western outskirts of London in Chiswick. It’s a brilliant place, still retaining much of its Victorian charm. Of course a key factor in all of this is their beers. They do make some spectacularly good beers. London Pride is a classic of such magnitude it’s hard to imagine a widely available beer coming close to it in sheer sexiness.

Their beers are ‘cask’ ales and have to be hand-pumped from the barrel into a glass the old-fashioned but non-gassy way. They have a big-ish core range and then summer and winter specials too. Their summer ale has honey in it and is a really light golden colour with a wonderful flavour.

I did manage to get my poppy shot in the end but have to say that I blew it out for PotD just because it’s a flower shot. It was certainly worth the little detour to get it because that gave me this.